Basic math

Here's a little equation I've been working on today:
Illiterate minion + overworked boss + slightly complex issue = total clusterfuck

I'll elaborate.

We've got a bunch of people with various specialties and roles in our organization. We need to track these people in a database so we can send them the information they need to sell our products. Creating this database has been one of the more agonizing projects I've ever been a part of, but I'm not going to tell the full story because I don't think my keyboard would survive the pounding.

Anyway, part of the project is deciding which roles and specialties we need to track, and which we can safely lump with others and ignore. I have delegated this to my minion, partly because she's the one who will work with the database, but mostly because I just got sick of dealing with it. My boss wants to go one direction, which happens to be completely wrong. The minion can't formulate a coherent argument to change her mind, and the boss is too busy to think it through any further or get together with both of us on a conference call. As of about 30 minutes ago, I've thrown up my hands and resolved to accept whatever comes out of this unholy union of inattention and stupidity, since I no longer have to use the damn thing.

My only regret here is that we've got a fantastic database guy working with us on the technical side. But now, after the third time we've completely changed directions, he probably thinks we're a bunch of meth addicts. So it goes.

One more random note of frustration: I've had no fewer than five different people this month explain away a missed deadline, failure to follow basic directions, or refusal to learn new things by saying, "I'm not technical." Which might be a reasonable excuse if they didn't work at one of the largest tech companies in the world. I understand that not everybody is as big a nerd as me, or gets the same buzz that I do when they install and run new software for the first time. Which is why I wrote step-by-step instructions with fucking pictures and sent them to everyone, with a giant flashing due date in bold at the top and a gracious offer to answer any questions. If you can't succeed given all that, it's not because you're "not technical," it's because you're either lazy or stupid.